In recent years, the popularity of viewing sporting events and other activities via the Internet has increased dramatically. It is now possible to view entire sporting events with online streaming video, whether pre-recorded or substantially live (i.e. live or with a slight delay).
However, many sporting events find at least part of their appeal in their technicality. For example, in baseball, an observer may be interested in whether an umpire's call of a ball or strike is correct. Similarly, in cricket, many enthusiasts are interested in the technicalities of how a wicket was lost, in particular by leg-before-wicket (LBW) or whether a bat actually struck a ball. As a result, significant technological efforts have been made to feed this interest. These involve high-speed camera systems such as Hawk-Eye™ to track a path of a ball and heat sensitive camera systems that will scan a bat for heat spots to determine whether or not a ball was struck. The Hawk-Eye system is a product of Hawk-Eye Innovations Ltd., which has an address at Unit C, The Apex Centre, Church Lane, Colden Common, Winchester, SO21 1TN.
In tennis, the Hawk-Eye system and others have been used to entertain viewers and also in some instances to decide whether or not a point has been scored.
Such systems can feed a series of images via image processing equipment to television viewers so that they can follow a path of a ball.
At this stage, however, the viewer's involvement is determined by the systems provided by the broadcasters, be they Internet-based or television-based. This can be frustrating for enthusiasts who may wish to view a particular play from a certain angle where such a view is not capable of being provided by such systems.
Recently, computer-based immersive virtual environments called “virtual worlds” have become popular. One prominent current example of a virtual world is “Second Life” by Linden Labs, 1100 Sansome Street, San Francisco, Calif. 94111. Other virtual worlds include “There”, which is operated by Makena Technologies, Inc., which has an office at 1825 South Grant Street, Suite 450, San Mateo, Calif. 94402, and “Entropia Universe”, a continuation of “Project Entropia”, operated by MindArk PE AB which has an address of Jarntorget 8, SE 413 04, Gothenburg, Sweden. A particular advantage of using such virtual environments is that they allow avatars to “participate” in activities. Thus, it would be possible for a user, represented by his or her avatar, to move around a virtual sporting locale during a simulation of a sporting activity.